FACEBOOK TARGETS ADVERTISERS AS 100 MILLION LOG ON IN AFRICA

One in 10 Africans are logging on to Facebook every month, the world's No.1 online social network said on Monday.

Of those 100 million people, 80 per cent are accessing the platform via mobiles on a continent with very low internet penetration and smartphone ownership, it said.

Facebook's global mobile advertising revenue jumped more than 150 per cent in the second quarter, accounting for about 62 per cent of overall ad revenue.

"There is a fantastic opportunity for business as well if you are local or a global business. Knowing that there is all these people now in Africa that you can connect with, that is exciting as well," said Nicola Mendelsohn, Facebook's vice president for Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Seven in 10 African consumers access the internet through their mobile phones, compared with 6 per cent who use desktop computers, according to an Ericsson study earlier this year.

Facebook would be pouring more resources into Africa to understand how consumers use its product and was considering opening an office on the continent in 2015, Mendelsohn said, without saying where the office might be.

The company is customising products to fit the needs of individual countries, she added. For example, it can now target users based on their internet speeds.

Facebook has more than 1.5 million active advertisers and more than 1.3 billion active users globally.

Mendelsohn could not say how much Africa contributes to advertising revenues but said the Europe, Middle East and Africa region makes up 30 per cent of global revenue.

 CNBC AFRICA

YOOKOS MOBILE APP GETS A FEATURE UPGRADE

Yookos has recently updated its mobile app features in order to enhance the user experience on Android, IOS and Blackberry handsets. The social networking site released the upgrade on September 4th and intends on focusing on photos, status updates  and private messaging.

The Yookos app receives its user-base from Nigeria, UK, South Africa, Ghana and Zimbabwe. According to the social networking platform, the release of the upgraded features will now enable users to create photo albums, repost status and allow easy access of private messages across all mobile platforms facilitating more intimate conversations between friends.

The product development team has embarked on an ongoing project to improve the networking site. Tomisin Fashina, CEO of Yookos stated that: “Our operational philosophy is shaped by a desire to constantly leverage innovative ideas and solutions that will not only expand the functionality of the platform but also make its usage incredible.”

Yookos is a social networking site started in 2011 to encourage sharing and consumption of information for people across the globe.

LINKEDIN'S APP JUST GOT MORE USEFUL

Today, LinkedIn revamped its mobile app in an effort to make it easier for users to connect.

Now, when you view someone's profile on Android iOS or the mobile website, LinkedIn will highlight connections and interests that you both share, as well as groups you have both joined. The aim is to facilitate conversation between individuals who are not yet connected, essentially by suggesting potential topics of discussion.

"What if, minutes before you met me for the first time, someone whispered in your ear and reminded you not only where I work (LinkedIn) and what I do (product management), but also who we both know in common, whether we overlapped any years in school, or if we worked at the same company?" Charlton Soesanto, a mobile product manager at LinkedIn, wrote in a blog post. "If you knew what we had in common or any of my interests (say biking or Latin poetry), chances are that we’ll probably have a pretty great first conversation."

In addition to providing ice-breakers, the redesign adds more contextual information to one of the company's most popular features i.e. the "Who's viewed your profile" page. According to Mashable, when someone looks at your profile, the mobile app will let you know how he or she found you (did you show up in a search, did they find you through a mutual connection or do they check you out because you checked them out first?).

For now, these features are only available on Android, iOS, and iPad apps, as well as through LinkedIn's mobile site.

COULD YOOKOS BE AFRICA’S NEXT FACEBOOK?

Facebook is growing at an exponential rate, along with the likes of Twitter. However, a new social media platform has arisen, and has set its sights on Africa. Yookos is a social networking site that allows users to meet friends online, play online games and keep up to date with the latest news from around the world.

The African-based social media platform recently reached over 10 million registered users, and it is steadily growing. Starting out in Nigeria, Yookos was essentially a Christian-focused site, which was used to communicate spiritual messages between members of the church. The original platform began becoming so popular that it eventually outgrew its ability to sustain the current members.

With the new platform running at full speed, users from across the world can create profiles, post status updates, write blog posts and engage with users in extended networks. The platform also offers a chat function and the ability to share content on other social media platforms.

After branching out and building an entirely new platform, the team at Yookos took the mobile space by storm by offering apps for smartphone devices. According to Olga Sikhwivhilu, Yookos representative: “More than 50% of its user base is from Nigeria, with the rest mainly from Zimbabwe, South Africa, the UK and the US.”

With the social platform growing at a steady rate, it could possibly be Africa’s next Facebook. The site launched as a commercial entity in January 2011 and, within 3 short months, gained more than 6m registered users.

Tomisin Fashina, Yookos’ CEO says: “With the swift upgrade of site from http to https, users can now socialise under a safer environment. Additionally, we are constantly working on other ways to make the site a lot more safer. This upgrade certainly contributes to enhanced user-security and building user-trust on site.”

IT NEWS AFRICA

5 SOCIAL MEDIA RULES EVERY ENTREPRENEUR SHOULD KNOW

Social media can level the playing field between industry leaders and upstarts, between multinational corporation executives and small-business owners, making peers of all participants. Yet appearances can be deceiving. To borrow from George Orwell's Animal Farm, all social-media users are equal, but some are more equal than others.

So what makes the difference between a following of 500 and a following of 500,000? While A-list celebrities can have an advantage over most everyone else, other social media darlings have grown their base of fans more organically, and you can learn from their strategies.

What follows are five keys culled from darlings of the current social media landscape for increasing your influence in a way that can make a difference to your business strategies.

1. Produce quality content.

If you want to make your mark on social media, first and foremost you should provide quality content. "Content is twofold," says Mari Smith, a social-media marketing expert and author of The New Relationship Marketing: How to Build a Large, Loyal, Profitable Network Using the Social Web (Wiley, 2011). "It's generating your own, [being] a thought leader. The other element is what I call OPC -- other people's content -- and not being afraid to share that."

10 STEPS TO GETTING STARTED IN SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

When it comes to using social media marketing to build your business, the worst action is no action, and your biggest problem is being invisible, not being talked about negatively. As long as you're part of the conversation on the social Web, you can hear what's being said about you and massage negative perceptions about your business. But if no one is talking about you, you have no chance for growth. That means you need to get involved on the social Web as soon as possible, not only to capitalize on the opportunities that it presents to your business, but also to develop and protect your reputation.

It's a good idea to start with a plan that has goals and an organizing framework to keep you on track. If you start down a path on the social Web and hate what you're doing, you can change things around. Just as you change networking and conversational approaches in person, you can do so on the social Web. The only differences are that on the social Web, you're talking through your keyboard, and your potential audience is much, much larger.

Here are 10 steps to get you started.

1. Determine your goals.
What do you want to get out of your social Web participation? Why are you doing it? Are you trying to generate direct sales? Are you trying to offer a form of customer service? Do you want to build relationships with customers and boost loyalty? Your answers to these questions greatly affect the type of content you publish and the activities you participate in on the social Web.

2. Evaluate your resources.
Who is going to create your content? Who is going to maintain your social media accounts? Who is going to respond to questions and be the face of your business online? Do you have the technical ability in-house to join the online conversation? If not, are you willing to learn? Can you or someone who works with you write well? You need to be sure you have the necessary people in place to execute a social media marketing plan before you start.

MOST ESSENTIAL SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS

In his book Tweet Naked, online marketing expert and Social Media Firm CEO Scott Levy provides the critical information entrepreneurs need to craft a social media strategy that will boost their brand and their business. In this edited excerpt, the author offers a quick look at the tools that can help you track your social media data.

There are tools that can help you track all possible social media data. Most are easy to use if you take the time to learn them, and many have both free and for-fee versions, the latter offering more detail.

The most useful tools are often those on the platforms themselves. For example, one of the simplest metrics that many businesses find extremely valuable is Facebook's PTAT (People Talking About This) score, which measures word-of-mouth marketing. It tracks the number of individual users or unique visitors who have interacted with the page. The number, which changes often, allows you to determine not only how many people are interacting with your pages but also whether that number is staying consistent, dropping or rising. For small-business owners who can't afford a 24/7 social media team, PTAT is a very helpful metric because it is a cost-effective manner of tracking content.

A slightly more complex factor to understand is EdgeRank. Even if Facebook users like a brand, they don't return to brand pages often, if at all. So many businesses look at the impact of showing up on users' news feeds, and EdgeRank is an algorithm designed to help brands increase their news feed visibility.

To understand the algorithm, it's important to first understand what "edge" means. Edge is a term for every possible Facebook action: updates, comments, likes, shares, etc. The algorithm takes into account each user's edges, and then measures the sum total of affinity, weight and time decay in conjunction with each action.

Affinity is the number of repeat interactions, including likes, sharing, commenting, etc., that a Facebook user has with a specific brand. The greater the interaction, the greater the relationship the user has with that brand.

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING STRATEGY.

Social media marketing is an important marketing tool for many small businesses as it takes less time and effort. It is effective but it needs to be planned and executed systematically. The following tips will guide you on how to go about it.

1. Planning: Begin to list out your objectives and map out a plan-of-action to meet these objectives. You should think of what you want to get out of social media marketing and how. You must think about your audience and how you are going to reach them. By planning your ideas, you will have something to refer back to in case you lose focus.

2. Commitment: Once you decide to use social media marketing as a tool, it is most effective to be totally devoted to it. You either give it your all or nothing. More harm than good will be done if you go into it halfheartedly.

5 COMMON MISTAKES ENTREPRENEURS MAKE ON TWITTER

Twitter is one of the purest forms of true social media -- conversations and direct interactions in real time happening all day, every day, making it one of the most valuable brand channels for entrepreneurs. You can find out what people are saying in real time about you and can personally connect with an individual in a genuine way.

While you may be promoting yourself or business on Twitter, you may be making a handful of easily correctable mistakes that could be severely limiting your influence and reach on Twitter, as well as hurting your brand.

Here are the five most common Twitter errors and how to correct them.